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“Siena is great at breaking balls when she puts her mind to it.”

“Then we have to hope Elio doesn’t kill her for your actions.”

He didn’t allow his face to show any reaction. “I made it part of my deal for not killing you.”

“I never thought I would see the day when the great Mattia Esposito was brought so low that he indulged in fantasies.”

“If I’m going down, then I’m going down fighting.”

“Good for you.” She straightened her back and swung her feet to the floor. “I’m hungry. Did you organise food for this shit hole, or are we both supposed to starve before I get the opportunity to kill you?”

Chapter Four

Standing slightly back from the kitchen threshold, Elvira saw it was even pokier than the glimpse she’d caught of it earlier when she’d gone to the bathroom. They were in the square hallway all the rooms to the apartment came from, Mattia standing to her left. They both had their guns in their hands, and she knew damned well that he was weighing up whether or not to lunge and try to wrestle hers from her. That was okay. She was weighing up whether she could catch him off guard enough to shoot him right now without taking a bullet herself for her troubles.

“There’s pizzas and paninis in the fridge,” Mattia said.

“Any real food?”

“There are fresh ingredients you are welcome to make something of if you can use them without needing a knife.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t outwitted you?” she asked curiously. “Would you have fed me?”

“As you’ve already pointed out, a dead Elvira wouldn’t be much of a bargaining chip, would she?”

“If I’d been forced to eat your excuse for cooking, I’d definitely be a dead Elvira. I can only imagine how much you’re missing your personal chef.”

She’d not yet stepped into the apartment Mattia had called home these last few years, but knew he’d kept a fleet of staff, just as he’d had when growing up. The luxurious villa he’d grown up in, bought before Lorenzo had declared war on her family, could fit the apartment Elvira had grown up in three times over in its kitchen.

It had taken her many years to understand why, when the Espositos already had so much, they’d been greedy for more, greedy enough to massacre her family and so many of their associates. Eventually she’d realised there was no depth to the mystery. It had just been greed for greed’s sake. They’d not been content to share Naples with the Ranieris. They’d wanted all of it, and all of Italy too.

By the end of the war, Elvira, her siblings, cousin and grandmother were living in an apartment barely bigger than this.

“Peeling my own grapes is the biggest ball ache,” he deadpanned.

“I feel your pain, but, hey, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Are you calling me old?”

“Compared to me, you’re ancient.”

“I’m thirty-six.”

“And I’m twenty-eight, so I rest my case.”

He sniggered. It was a sound like that of a cartoon dog from her childhood, and she felt an unwanted grin trying to break free and clamped her lips tightly to stop it. The smiles she’d given up to now had been to disarm him. That Caligula was proving to have something of a sense of humour – only the glimmer of one, for sure, but still – was more than a little disconcerting.

What was less disconcerting was standing at the threshold of a kitchen before the sun had risen and pondering what to eat. Sleep had never come easy for Elvira. If she hadn’t been kidnapped and had instead returned to her apartment, there was no guarantee she’d be asleep.

“As you need the practice, you can do the honours,” she said.

“Uh-uh,” he disputed, and shook his head for emphasis. “I am not turning my back to you for a second.”

“Scared I’ll shoot you?” she challenged.

“I’m quaking.”

He was so damned deadpan that it was actually quite sexy. Mattia was sexy. She remembered catching his eye when Elio was marrying Siena, and unwittingly being struck by the thought that he was the sexiest man in the chapel. He was so dark and brooding that if he were an actor or singer, adolescent Elvira would have plastered her bedroom walls with posters of him. The scar above his top lip only added to his sexiness. That he had a body to die for was the icing on the cake.